


If You Take Requests, I've Got a Few for You

by apanoplyofsong



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4664106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apanoplyofsong/pseuds/apanoplyofsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy Blake refuses to fall for his employee. So, naturally, he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Take Requests, I've Got a Few for You

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time _ever_ writing anything that could even loosely be described as fic, and my first time writing narratively since required to do so for school (so, a solid decade). Hopefully it doesn't reflect that too roughly.  
>  The action in this fic is essentially Disney-G-rated, but, well, I curse a lot more than Disney so I adjusted accordingly.
> 
> A special shout-out to [Hannah](http://hanbroseburnside.tumblr.com/) and [Andrea](http://wanderlustwoman.tumblr.com/) for both encouraging me and putting up with the heaping pile of anxiety that is me with this fic and as a person.
> 
> Title from Same Cooke's "Having a Party."

Bellamy Blake will not be that guy.

He _refuses_ to be that guy.

He has had to listen to (and watch, on a few jaw-grinding occasions) Octavia complain about flirting bosses and expectant coworkers too many times to be the guy who makes a move on his employee. The thought of anyone feeling like they had no choice but to be with him, just because he's their boss, makes him mildly nauseous. Not to mention the added stress he imagines would come with a harassment claim.

He’s only had employees for two days, but his mind is made up.

Not that that makes a difference in the end.

He never expected Clarke Griffin. Beautiful, quick-witted, sarcastic Clarke Griffin, skin glowing gold in the late summer sunlight filtering through the bar’s half-washed windows, looking for a job while she finishes her masters in art therapy.

Bellamy offers her a position on a Tuesday, and finds himself happier than makes sense when she accepts. He pays no attention to the emotion.

He probably should have.

 

\----

 

"Blake!" a voice gruffs out behind him. It’s a week after all the staff has been hired and their final training has just finished. Bellamy looks to see Miller, his bar's manager, gesticulating towards him with the phone's receiver before setting it down on a counter.

Bellamy smiles down at the woman he was talking to (employee, he reminds himself--he has fucking employees now) before walking over to grab it. He checks the caller ID before raising it to his ear, eyes wandering towards where he had stood with Clarke a moment ago as he greets his sister.

“Sorry, O, I was just with a new bartender,” he mutters distractedly. Clarke grins at him easily as she meets his gaze, blonde hair streaming freely behind her as she slides into the conversation her new coworkers were holding.

“How are her tits?”

That effectively gains his attention. He ignores his stomach’s guilty flip and the fact that Octavia accurately assumed the gender of said bartender. Octavia’s scary intuitive when it comes to him.

“Great,” Bellamy deadpans, running a hand over his face as he turns resolutely, leaning against a wall. “Did you actually call for a reason?”

Octavia rattles off something about the course she's taking needing an extra book and would he have it to lend to her for the semester, and he mutters back instructions to check the bookshelf by his bed before saying goodbye and turning back to the bar.

He's proud of this place.

Maybe pride is a strange feeling to have while surveying a comfortably-above-seedy-but-decidedly-below-nice-college-centric bar in the middle of the day, but. It's there nonetheless. Bellamy's worked hard renovating the space since he bought it in a foreclosure auction a month ago, and it's finally ready to open. He's really doing this.

Or, at least, he's trying to.

On cue, a glass falls from Jasper's hand as he attempts to spin it around his fingers in some move he saw on the Food Network and shatters sharply on the ground. Shoving the broom at the gangly bartender's chest, Bellamy's eyes catch again on Clarke, laughing throaty and bright at the dumbfounded look on Jasper's face, her head tilting back slightly so her hair shines under the hazy lights and her cheeks pink pleasantly. He has to tip his head down and pretend to be grumbling at the mess to hide the way his lips quirk up on both sides.

 

\----

 

Which is how, seemingly suddenly, Bellamy finds himself past his bar's grand opening and nursing a giant, inappropriate, undeniable crush on one employee Clarke Griffin.

Fuck.

 

\----

 

He tries shoving it aside when he first notices it rearing its head about a month in, the week half the staff catches the flu and he has to fill in behind the bar while she’s on shift. Clarke is capable and charismatic, exactly the qualities he’d hired her for; only now their full force seems directed at him. She pours drink after drink, making quips in between about the bad lines various patrons use on her throughout the night.

"It's like they don't realize it's literally part of my job to be nice to them," she comments with a quick smirk and a flash of rolling blue eyes.

Bellamy restrains himself from saying that being under her attention is probably enough to have that effect on most humans.

They move around each other easily all night, trading jokes and jabs and working so smoothly in unison that he barely notices the time ticking; barely mourns the fact that he'll have to come in early the next day to make up for the accounts he should have been in his office double checking that night.

Bellamy decides he doesn’t mind when she stays late to chat.

 

\----

 

It slams into him full-force a month after that when Clarke comes into his office still bundled up against the budding fall chill and, with a cheesy flourish, presents him a coffee from his favorite shop across town, the one she knows about from the late night conversations around his desk or the register that have probably become a bit too common.

"I was in the area," she explains with a grin and a shrug, the steam from her own cup almost hiding the small beauty mark above her lip as she sips carefully. He blinks, thanks her, and watches her stride away before taking a drink. Bellamy is suddenly, acutely aware that the warmth barreling through his chest has nothing to do with the coffee's heat. She had prepared it perfectly.

 

\----

 

Three months in, Bellamy adopts what seems like his best defensive maneuver and starts avoiding her. Or, at least, minimizing contact time, since he can't stand to not be around Clarke entirely. That'd be suspicious, he tells himself. He is her boss, after all, and, while the bar's doing okay for a new business, it isn't big enough yet to have a surplus of employees. He has to be around her sometimes.

Nonetheless, Bellamy finds himself coming in earlier than usual to knock out parts of the office work he'd usually leave until later and leaving Miller to run things more often while he checks on orders and deliveries. He slips out earlier in the evenings instead of staying late to talk to anyone. He adamantly adopts an internal monologue of _you cannot fall for your employee, you goddamn disaster_. He’s impressed it’s only mildly overdramatic.

Avoiding Clarke is more difficult once she meets Octavia, who comes bounding in one night, all fire and energy and demanding a shot for herself, her boyfriend, and the pretty bartender. The two women bond over successive nights and Clarke ends up in his life outside work. Bellamy is left skirting around corners of the apartment he nominally shares with his sister, coming home to groups passing popcorn around the sofa; Clarke's presence somehow commanding more space and acknowledgement than the people around her. He pretends that his heart doesn’t swell three goddamn sizes watching his bartender ( _his bartender_ , he reminds himself mechanically) and his sister throwing snacks to each other across his living room.

He pretends he couldn’t get used to it.

So Bellamy tries not to watch Clarke, tries to smile and nod naturally when he’s caught anyway, but it still feels like he’s constantly tripping over wires she doesn’t know she’s set, hopelessly stumbling ever further into the cosmos that is Clarke Griffin.

He’s pretty sure he could love her, if he had the chance.

 

\----

 

The plan backfires, of course. Not long after Bellamy consciously decides to Spend Less Time Around Clarke, she marches into his office, face determined and fair curls flying, and shuts the door behind her soundly before throwing first her bag and then herself down on the seats crammed into the room across from his desk. Bellamy tries to tell himself his chest doesn't vibrate just a tiny bit at how comfortable she's obviously gotten in his space, but he should probably be way past lying by now. He's dumb enough to have gotten himself into this mess, but he's not _completely_ ignorant.

"Are you avoiding me?" Clarke asks bluntly. "Did something happen I'm missing out on?"

Bellamy stares. He probably should have been prepared for this. Subtlety's never been his strong suit, especially when it comes to Clarke. He consciously snaps his mouth shut.

“Am I…?” he sputters.

“Did I do something?” Clarke leans forward, elbows perched on his desk and face earnest, dancing between concern and irritation as she continues. “You’ve just been acting unusually lately. I wanted to make sure things were okay. I know the week around midterms was a little rough—is the bar doing alright? Is it Octavia? Is it too strange for me to be friends with her and work with you? Because we’re adults, Bellamy, I really think we can manage that.”

Her blue eyes are boring into him and she worries her lip, catching her breath after her quick speech. A wave of guilt crashes over him. She’s _concerned_. She’s concerned about _him_ ; that _she_ might have done something wrong.

As if the problem wasn’t him being colossally dumb enough to fall for his employee in the first place.

“No, no,” he finally breathes, doing his best not to blurt out that really she’s perfect, great, the best damn thing he’s ever seen. He runs his hand through his curls instead in an attempt to collect himself. “No, nothing’s going on. Please still be friends with Octavia; I think you’re the sanest one in that bunch.” He holds her gaze, trying his best to convey calm and conviction as he says, “Really. Everything’s fine.”

Clarke just looks at him for a minute, measuring him with her gaze before sitting back in her seat.

“Okay,” she says finally. “But you know you can always talk to me, right? If something were going on. We’re friends. I’m sure we could handle whatever.”

“Yeah. We’re friends.” His lips tilt crookedly at the recognition.

 

\----

 

Another month passes and Bellamy slips back into old habits. If there was anyone to question it, he would claim it’s to ease Clarke’s mind, but really he just enjoys being around her, enjoys knowing that she enjoys being around him. Even if it is in a different way. They’re talking regularly before or after the bar’s open hours again, covering everything from pizza toppings to parental deaths to her choosing to pursue art over medicine. Now and then he watches her spin around between tables as she clears them, her gaze catching on his intermittently, her hips swaying and lips mouthing along with the songs playing overhead, and he can’t help but feel physically drawn in her direction, can’t help but let his hand linger on her every time they brush.

He’s happy having her in his life at all, happy to have her to challenge him and understand him and laugh with him anytime she’s around. He tries not to notice the way her eyes seem to soften at him sometimes or how she never pulls back from his touch. It’s better not to get his hopes up. Not when he can’t, refuses to, have her like this anyway.

A week before the semester ends, he thinks it all comes crashing down.

Clarke slides into his office as usual, tucking herself into a chair so she can look directly at him, and declares, “I’m putting in my notice.”

The smile that had begun to form at her appearance freezes halfway onto his face. Before he’s realized it, Bellamy’s crossed from behind his desk and is pulling up the seat next to her, a dumbfounded look undoubtedly plastered across his features.

“What?”

“I’m quitting,” she repeats, like this isn’t monumental news (which, he guesses, for her, it isn’t—this is just a job, in her world).

“I…Can I ask why?” Bellamy asks carefully, gears shifting over and over in his brain. “I mean, if something happened that you’re unhappy with it’d be helpful to know going forward.”

“The art program needs another lab monitor in the spring. The hours will work easily around my classes, and I’ll get to fuss at freshmen who don’t know to clean up a studio space. And,” her look turns intent and searching, her eyes boring into him in a way that leaves him feeling open for her to read, “it means you won’t be my boss anymore.”

Bellamy stares at her, wonders if he could possibly be understanding right.

“And that’s a good thing? Me not being your boss?” His heart is screaming out an altered mantra, _she won’t be your employee, you goddamn disaster!_ , but he’s trying to quiet its din, speak slowly; afraid if he listens to the internal alarms he’ll always be stuck on this precipice. Waiting to grab her hand and jump.

“Yes,” Clarke says lowly, a small smile tugging at her face. “I think so. Especially if you wanted to get a drink with me sometime.”

Her gaze flits between his eyes and his mouth, and Bellamy is suddenly conscious of the way they’d already positioned themselves as closely as possible in the two ugly office chairs, heat radiating between them as she leans in slowly, watching him carefully as if he might back away.

Instead, he grins, offers up a mental _screw it_ to the universe, and closes the space to capture her mouth with his. His hand tangles in the softness of the hair behind her ears, their lips moving gently as they search out the push and pull that has always guided their interactions. When they pull apart a minute later, Clarke’s bottom lip pink where he had teased it gently with his teeth, she grins and her eyes are bright.

He's pretty sure his heart's going to jump out of his chest, cling to her, and never let go.

"So, about that drink..." Clarke cocks an eyebrow and rises to back slowly out of the room and towards the bar, keeping her gaze locked on him the entire way. He feels mesmerized by the way her mouth moves, the way her body swings through the doorway, the way her voice makes his skin tingle slightly. "You coming?"

"Yeah," Bellamy smiles. "I'm right behind you."

**Author's Note:**

> I have never worked at/owned a bar, so I take full responsibility for any and all related inaccuracies.  
> I can generally be found on tumblr [here](http://apanoplyofsong.tumblr.com/).  
> This little introspective piece wouldn't leave my head, so thanks for making it through with me. <3


End file.
